Less is more : completing narratives in miniature fiction

This essay examines how readers interpret and interact with miniature fiction by completing the narratives in these extremely short stories. This is not to suggest that more traditional short stories have always provided complete narratives, but what we have found with miniature fiction is that the reader is more often required to complete the narrative in order for the story to make sense. At the same time, this inferencing process makes readers respond to these stories as they would to texts belonging to other genres. Specifically, we will consider the following pieces of writing: an untitled 6-word story by Graham Swift, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ (148 words) by David Gaffney, ‘Water’ (186 words) by Fred Leebron, and ‘Sparkles’ (175 words) by Louise Yeiser. We have chosen these texts because in our opinion each provides a striking illustration of what ‘short shorts’ require of the reader in order for them to make sense. It could be argued that each text demands more of its readers than the previous; hence the order of our discussion is incremental in terms of the complexity of the texts in question. Common to all four texts are the following: •Inferences made to comprehend the narrative•Inferences employed from known social narratives •Inferences of the types used in reading texts from other genres. Within this general examination of inferences, factors specific to each text will also be analysed